Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Time lapse digital storytelling fun

Time lapse digital storytelling fun

Published by Wesley Fryer in apple, digitalstorytelling, open source on May 23rd, 2007

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The chain of online learning leads to an unexpected but wonderful place again today… While exploring Steve Whitaker’s website today after learning about Ustream, I discovered the free software Gawker which:

is an application for Mac OS X that creates time-lapse movies using a webcam. Images from your camera can be shared, allowing other users to record your image stream. Streams can also be combined to create a time-lapse movie with up to four locations side-by-side.

Steve’s fastforward blog has a fun collection of examples, my favorite is “spring cleaning.” I should have used this program last weekend when my kids and I put together a metal swingset in our backyard. It would have been perfect to capture the event!

Now I’ll have to think of a different context to use this program. Having a built-in camera in my Macbook makes this an ideal application for stopmotion videography. I love Steve’s “spring cleaning” video because I love watching the clouds move across the sky. Stopmotion videos of clouds are often one of my favorite parts of IMAX films. Maybe I can capture the development of some Oklahoma thunderstorms one afternoon this summer.

More examples of movies created with Gawker are available on the project’s sourceforge site. I like the west versus north stereo Gawker movie of Colorado storm clouds:

This one of clouds over Round Mountain, North Carolina is also great. I found this by searching YouTube for the tag “gawker.” Not all the videos with that tag were created with Gawker software, but some were.